


Heavy

by gildedfrost



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24164113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildedfrost/pseuds/gildedfrost
Summary: There is a weight in Connor’s chest. It feels like a stone, choking his breath and dragging him down to the earth, and he alleviates it the only way he knows how.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	Heavy

There is a weight in Connor’s chest.

It feels like a stone, choking his breath and dragging him down to the earth. At the side of his bed, he bows his head as if in prayer, sinking to his knees as standing becomes too great a task. Diagnostics tell him there is not even a feather, no foreign contaminants and no abnormalities in his build to bring him down, only the standard functioning pieces that he has always had.

The answer is unsatisfactory. 

There is a pocket knife and pair of scissors, two possessions wholly his own, separate from that which he shares with Hank. Few items belong to him, and these ones--shamefully--see the most use.

Something is wrong with him and he alleviates it the only way he knows how. If a technician cannot repair him, then at least he can stifle the feeling, misdirect it, create a problem so that he can see the error reports that he expects to see and drown out the thing that is not real.

His chassis is now jagged: Along his stomach, bits of synthetic material have been chipped and cut away, piece by tiny piece. The plates on his arms look like an animal chewed along the edges, the shape beginning to warp with the change in stress distribution. The sides of his legs are starting to look bumpy, the change visible even when his skin is active, and even Hank has noticed, asking if it’s normal.

It is, Connor replies. It’s perfectly normal. 

He doesn’t show Hank. The only piece of himself that he truly shows are his hands, the shiny white and grey almost as clean as the day he was made, nothing but a few scuffs on the surface. But he knows Hank can see something, like the harm isn’t truly hidden, and sometimes he asks questions that make it seem like the weight inside of him is visible, some sort of anguish that Hank can see but he can’t.

It makes him want to scream.

Error messages linger in his sight day in and day out. Damage to this or that biocomponent, technician required, stress levels rising. A clear manifestation of what he’s experiencing as more than just some nebulous feeling, the same way he can kiss and hold and make love to Hank as a way to make his affections real and concrete.

Voicing his emotions doesn’t help. He can’t tell anyone what he’s feeling, not without feeling silly or like he needs proof of it. There aren’t any words suitable to express himself, not even when he looks through poetry and prose and struggles to find pieces that resonate with him, unable to connect with words that seem as flat as the pages they’re written on. Language can’t give him the depth he needs. He doesn’t even tell Hank he loves him, not when the words feel so shallow and touch is the only sufficient method of communication.

Hank’s embrace is a temporary buoy, but not a cure. He continues to damage his chassis, each little nick adding more errors and something he’s beginning to identify as pain. Pleasure, pain, favorable and unfavorable sensations--it’s slow, but he develops a sense of these, feelings not native for androids but entering into the deviant consciousness as individual perception adjusts to lived experiences. 

He finds that he doesn’t enjoy pain, but it gives him a suitable distraction and manifestation of the undefinable anguish in his heart. There are grief and guilt, perhaps, the words failing to encapsulate adequate meaning for him to use them, but there is also a nebulous _something_ , heavier than anything he could attempt to define. Any reprieve he finds does not last. 

So he continues taking himself apart bit by bit, and when Hank finally sees him, there is a fraction of his hurt reflected in his lover’s eyes. 

It isn’t a pleasant sight, but for the first time, Connor feels like someone understands him. 


End file.
